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CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Objetivo

To improve our understanding of the evolution of groundwaters in coastal areas during times of lowered sea levels in the late Pleistocene and Holocene along a NE-SW European traverse from Estonia to the Canary Islands. Assess the response of representative coastal aquifers to human influence and climatic change as a basis for the improved groundwater management of coastal regions of Europe.

The project will focus on: Aquifers as archives of former climatic and environmental conditions. To investigate the extent to which groundwater retains the signature of past recharge events. Such evidence can be used as additional proxy data on climatic change, notably direct evidence of former wet episodes, which can be compared and checked with other marine or continental indicators (sediment cores, ice cores for example). The time scale of interest for the groundwater archive is up to 50,000 years with a potential resolution of measurement using radiocarbon of +/- 100 years, although hydrogeological and geochemical factors will affect this resolution. A wide range of isotopic and geochemical indicators will be applied to aquifers in the different countries The extent of freshening of coastal saline aquifers. To investigate the renewal of saline aquifers that occurred during freshwater advance during sea level lowering, the rate of these processes during the past 50,000 years and their impact at the present day. The focus will be on present coastlines where the effects are more marked and where re-advance of the sea may even have trapped undetected freshwater in the near and offshore zones. The extent of palaeowater advance into sedimentary basins. Lowered sea levels also had an effect inland by encouraging deeper circulation of groundwater, controlled by more distant outlets. Present saline/fresh water interfaces at depth in many inland areas are therefore likely to be the result of former hydrological conditions unrelated to present day hydraulic heads. The interface between modern polluted and pre-industrial groundwater resources. To investigate the extent to which high quality palaeowaters are being impacted by pollution. Freshwater storage. Water supply in coastal regions is often difficult to manage due to the combined effects of seasonal demand and sea-water intrusion. Cyclic storage and recovery of freshwater in deep saline aquifers.The design of such schemes depends on an understanding of the hydraulic and geochemical conditions in such aquifers, including their former evolution. Modelling of the water quality changes over the past 50,000 years. To use the data from the various European countries to determine at what rates geochemical processes have operated in freshening (or salinising) aquifer systems in relation to past scenarios of hydraulic head change. To project these to future change, accelerated by climate change and human activity over the range of climatic conditions in the European Community.